Barclays Breakdown – The State of Marketing
Barclays Breakdown – The State of Marketing in 2019
The Adtech ascendancy Marketing breakdown
The revolution will be digitalised.
The Minty Digital marketing whizzes have broken down the entire Barclays 2019 Marketing Forecast, written by Sean Duffy and Lorraine Ruckstuhl. We’ve compressed it into a readable, consumable guide.
Aims of their market forecast?
- Analyse the current market space
- Interview the top players in the sector
- Break down expected trends
Aims of our market forecast breakdown
- Condense the long and drawn out areas
- Make sure your limited reading time is valued
- Compile only the most important points
Let’s crack on…
Collaborative Working
With 63{8e70974195c48f015656ec00029c2bf559b83ca472845d96d7b604466648386d} of major brand media budgets now being taking in house, agencies are having to take another approach. This involves actively placing their staff within client companies for short periods of time to really get stuck in with how the companies work. This can minimise communication issues between clients and agencies.
This is perfect for the company because as well as having an outsourced expert from another agency to save on training time, it also limits a lot of the responsibilities that come with taking someone on full time. Instead, there are flexible working structures that often suit both expert and client.
Generic agencies will die
Becoming a specialist is going to be the way to move forward from 2019. With relatively low barriers to entry now prevailing within marketing, clients are looking for specialists in their fields.
‘Generic, undifferentiated creative businesses will continue to struggle as business is won by those who have a compelling value proposition, can adapt to the changing environment, and deliver what clients need.’ – Barclays Martech report
Whether that means specialising in certain verticals such as e-commerce, fashion, or home improvements, or rather just being an expert in Pay Per Click, you can be sure that the ‘Jack of all Trade and Vertical’ agencies of the past will start to be phased out 1 by 1.
The industry is growing
The marketing industry is expected to grow again this year, this time by a whopping £16 billion (referenced from Barclays).
Whilst the major Big 6 international marketing holding companies have been less active, consultancies such as Deloitte, IBM and Accenture continue to expand their footprint in the sector which indicates further scope that this industry is far from dying.
Multi-channel customer acquisition
Chatbots, email automation, and live chats are all adding to the list of services providing seamless customers journeys through multiple channels.
24-hour email reply does not cut it anymore, so you need to ensure you are there every step of your customer’s journey, from awareness to aftercare, if you really want to see your brand thrive.
Agencies who can manage this whole journey in-house are going to come out on top this year as we also see that clients are favouring going through one company to manage their marketing, rather than losing time, getting lost in translation, and crossing values when using multiple agencies to market their services.
“To achieve the goal of a 360 degree, global, digital proposition you have to have a joined-up approach blending data, creative and media-buying. You need a culture that is collaborative. With a single provider, it’s fluid and organic. It allows you to provide the right message, in the right place at the right time” – Rob Pierre, CEO, Jellyfish
Working in flexible environments
Acquiring the top talent means you’re going to have to give something back, no longer will employees at the top of their game want to work in the standard offices of years back.
Top agencies that offer features such as flexi-time, healthy meals, yoga, personal trainers, flattened hierarchies, and extended holidays will find themselves attract the top players.
Traditional agencies with long hours, rigid command, and control hierarchies will lose out in the battle for top talent.
The rise of the robots.
AI, voice recognition and augmented reality are slowly but surely positioning themselves solidly within the marketing sector.
As technology evolves due to the rapid data collection and processing going on behind the scenes, we can see these areas of Marktech making positive impacts across the industry. Advances in natural language processing, automation, and machine learning are leading the way.
It is thought that in the next five years, approximately 80{8e70974195c48f015656ec00029c2bf559b83ca472845d96d7b604466648386d} of business communications with customers will be performed through bot messengers. As well as improving customer satisfaction, this will also massively reduce budgets for the businesses using this tech.
“We’ve been developing AI for four years but have seen the benefits commercially with a chatbot called Toby that we built for Vodafone on the IBM Watson platform. With Toby conversion rates on SIM purchase improved 100{8e70974195c48f015656ec00029c2bf559b83ca472845d96d7b604466648386d}, there was a 50{8e70974195c48f015656ec00029c2bf559b83ca472845d96d7b604466648386d} reduction in completion time and a 90 out of 100 usability rating” – Ben Rudman, COO, Be Heard.
Billboards are back
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising, has seen a rise in use by some of the industries biggest players such as Netflix and Google. By revolutionising traditional billboards with a digital upgrade, companies are able to target their audiences in real time based on dependencies such as weather, news, or day of the week.
It also allows media buyers to micro-target audiences by renting out billboards by things such as time of day or temperature.
This is a perfect opportunity for a campaign by a company such as Deliveroo offering that easy after work meal when customers are stuck in rush hour traffic, or refreshing drinks in pub gardens when the weather is warm. This micro-targeting, as well as providing the right message at the right time, will also help bring down marketing costs for those who are advertising services at timers their customer needs them most.
In regards to outside influences such as traffic, OOH is also using dynamic creatives to optimize their targeting by speed of traffic, using shorter messages for fast moving traffic speed and more text being displayed when traffic is at a standstill.
“Flexible buying, whereby even a specific ten-second spot on a single billboard can be bought, will be a reality in the near future. It will be almost like a Tetris game to slot in all the spots. That’s where programmatic automation comes into its own.” Justin Cochrane, CEO – Clear Channel UK.
Netflix are recently reported to have paid $150 million for 32 billboards in the prime US location, Hollywood’s Sunset Strip.
OOH advertising reached a tipping point in 2018 where for the first time in history, it surpassed traditional outdoor advertising in terms of unique reach.
There we have it
We hope you enjoyed our market breakdown of the Adtech ascendancy – The next wave of digitalisation in marketing breakdown.
If you have a bit more time and want to read the full report, you can download the full report here.
